MAINE PUBLIC • October 17, 2025
Brookfield Renewable told Maine regulators that its decision to sell four dams on the Kennebec River was influenced by the state's "overburdensome" fish passage requirements to relicense the four hydropower generators. In an Oct. 16 letter to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the international power company said standards imposed by the state in a draft water quality certificate conflicted with state law, would be prohibitively expensive to implement and were "arguably unattainable." One of the motivating factors for the sale "is the increasingly complex, expensive and uncertain regulatory landscape surrounding hydroelectric operations on the Lower Kennebec River," the company said in its letter. The Nature Conservancy last month unveiled an agreement to buy the dams around Skowhegan and Waterville with the goal of decommissioning them and ultimately returning a natural flow to the river and allow fish including Atlantic Salmon to swim to spawning grounds in its tributaries.